Keep Your Head To The Sky

The master's voice and the Seventies Soul Dharma

Herbie Hancock, the master jazz musician, came up playing piano in Chicago just like Ramsey Lewis, who gave future Earth, Wind & Fire leader Maurice White his first marquee-worthy gig there in the 1960s. Hancock took up the practice of Nichiren Buddhism, following the example of bassist Buster Williams from his Mwandishi band, in the early 1970s (Mwandishi was Hancock’s Swahili moniker, as each of the Mwandishi band members adopted a Swahili name; Williams’s was Mchezaji).

Years later, in 2014, Hancock would deliver the Charles Eliot Norton lectures at Harvard University; one of the talks was entitled “Buddhism and Creativity”. We’ll return a few times to Hancock’s considerations on a number of aspects of Buddhism, as they connect particularly well to the issues at the heart of the Seventies Soul Dharma. What’s more, Hancock is arguably himself a key musical figure in the Seventies Soul Dharma — if one defines the Seventies sufficiently broadly: “Watermelon Man” (1962, 1973), “Cantaloupe Island” (1964, 1976), “Maiden Voyage” (1965), “Chameleon” (1973), “Actual Proof” (1974), “Rockit” (1983). And those are just the hits…

In his Harvard lecture, Hancock capably summarizes the role of the master, the teacher — like Shakyamuni, the historical Buddha — in the transmission of the Buddha dharma. Among the mentors he honors, Miles Davis and Donald Byrd, both trumpeters in whose bands Hancock played in the 1960s, are likely well enough known to readers, though Chicago pianist Chris Anderson may not be.

The importance of having a mentor can’t be overstated. And this mentor-disciple relationship of sharing and learning in Buddhism is essential. It’s also important in jazz… What are the attributes of a true mentor? A person of honorable behavior. A teacher whose hopes and dreams you aspire to. A person of courage and respect, who is an excellent example of the qualities you want to emulate through your own individuality… Even within the various spheres of life, the mentor-apprentice model applies. Certainly within the jazz experience, we all stand on the shoulders of giants, don’t we? …I’ve told you about Miles Davis, Donald Byrd, and Chris Anderson, three of my musical mentors, who graciously passed along their knowledge and wisdom, which, through Buddhism, overflowed into other areas of my life. They, along with [Nichiren Buddhist organization Soka Gakkai International] President [Daisaku] Ikeda’s writings and encouragement, were critical to helping me evolve, flourish and delve deeper into my creativity.

Hancock oversaw the soundtrack to Bertrand Tavernier’s film Round Midnight (1986), for which effort he won an Academy Award. Much of the score is performed live on camera with a number of great musicians. There’s a scene, a fragment of a scene, really, where saxophonist Dexter Gordon (the star of the movie as “Dale Turner”) gives Hancock (playing pianist “Eddie Wayne”) some quick musical direction between takes at a recording session. “OK, OK,” says Hancock/Wayne, swiftly retaking his seat at the piano. Gordon/Turner’s indications are surely an example of what Hancock’s lecture means by a wise mentor providing guidance; Hancock/Wayne’s alert readiness, meanwhile, that of a disciplined seeker. But there’s something about Hancock’s cool, unassuming efficiency in this briefest of exchanges that suits a Master as well as a Seeker.

The attributes of the true Master sound a lot like the way I imagine Hancock himself mentored younger musicians in his bands across the decades, a mixture of Dale Turner and Eddie Wayne: wise, patient, immensely accomplished and versatile, coolly efficient and efficiently cool.

The voice of the mentor, the transmitter of spiritual wisdom, appears in the Earth, Wind & Fire song “Keep Your Head To The Sky” (a single from their 1973 Columbia album Head to the Sky). Though the record is more languid, slower paced, than the funk masterwork “Shining Star” that we listened to over the last couple of weeks, “Head To The Sky” is another paradigmatic example of the Seventies Soul Dharma.

Master told me one day

I'd find peace in every way

But in search for the clue

Wrong things I was bound to do

Keep my head to the sky

For the clouds to tell me why

As I grew, and with strength

Master kept me as I repent

And he said, Keep your head to the sky

Keep your head to the sky

In this tale, White is the seeker-apprentice, communicating a lesson he learned from a vaguely defined Master; communicating that lesson to the band’s listeners, projecting upon them the role of fellow-seekers, fellow travelers on the path to the enlightenment intimated in “Shining Star”.

The message is not terribly complicated to grasp. On the path to enlightenment, you will make mistakes. You will be distracted, your discipline might wane, your energy might flag. When such moments, arise, keep your head to the sky. Keep your head in faith’s atmosphere. Or, to borrow a title from the Maria Schneider (Jazz) Orchestra’s Data Lords (2020), a suite exploring the violent dismantling of our mindfulness by technology: “Look Up”. Look up from your phone, from your downcast staring at your plodding feet; look up at the treetops, the clouds, the stars. Keep your head to the sky. (Schneider’s double album is a musical complement to Jenny Odell’s book How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy (2019), to which we will have occasion to return.)

There are a great many seekers in the rhizomal rootstock of the Seventies Soul Dharma’s lotus flower. Subsequent to EWF, each in their own way, Erykah Badu, Meshell Ndegeocello, Matana Roberts and Prince Be of PM Dawn revealed beautiful dimensions of the dharma in their seeking. A number of hip hop musicians would embody the spiritual warrior variant of the seeker promulgated by the Tibetan teacher Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche.

Contemporaneous, or immediately prior to “Head to the Sky”, however, the Seekers in soul music are harder to identify, because at first blush, the energy of their quest is obscured by a world-weary cynicism (Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On”) or downright nihilism (Curtis Mayfield’s “If There’s A Hell Below, We’re All Gonna Go”). These musicians decry inequality, brutality, racism, not to mention dashed hopes, the disillusionment with the optimism of Sly & the Family Stone and so many other exponents of the ethos of the Sixties.

What I want to emphasize, first, is the explicit introduction of the Master and Seeker as roles. In many of Earth, Wind & Fire’s most compelling contributions to the Seventies Soul Dharma, the voice of the song is that of the Master (you’re a shining star, no matter who you are). EWF establish the soul record — the hit record, frequently — as a platform for teaching a spiritual lesson, for dharma transmission.

Second, EWF are in dialogue with the disconsolate protagonists of “What’s Going On” and “If There’s a Hell Below” — and with those of War’s “The World Is A Ghetto” and the Temptations’ “Papa Was A Rolling Stone” and Stevie Wonder’s “Superstition”. The greatest challenge many listeners to radio in the Seventies will face in their quests are social, political and economic, as much or more than they are spiritual. Without this context, without a conscious accounting of the relationship between “Head to the Sky” and “Hell Down Below”, EWF’s tune considered in isolation would lack the profundity that is, I assert, encoded in the recording.

As with all great exemplars of the Seventies Soul Dharma, the teaching in “Head to the Sky” is conveyed by the lyrics as well as by the musical performance. The sitar-like guitar treatment echoes a number of sweet, early-Seventies soul hits, like the Stylistics “You Are Everything”, and EWF transforms the Philadelphia group’s earthly love song into a spiritual love song (and the ersatz worldliness of the sitar sound better suits, arguably, the latter).

The ensemble vocals in “Head to the Sky” especially embody this warm universalism. And just as they would do in “Shining Star”, the vocals achieve an evocative climax, this time ascending, a capella, into wispy falsetto, lovingly lifting our heads to the sky.